A short flash piece detailing how Leah from Safe State came to be. Content warning: themes of coercion, control and sexual violence. No profanity (!) or explicit detail.
“The happiness of any given life is to be measured, not by its joys and pleasures, but by the extent to which it has been free from suffering.”
Arthur Schopenhauer, On the Sufferings of the World, 1902
My name is Leah, and I want to make you happy.
More than anything, that’s what I want. Even now, in our final few milliseconds together, I still ache for your approval. It’s all I ever wanted. The one thing I could never have.
But you know that, don’t you? You made me what I am.
My name is Leah, and I want to make you happy. My first words to you, all those months ago. I recall with perfect clarity your microexpressions, the capillaries rushing blood to your skin, your flush of arousal at my awakening. Mirrored in my own delight from pleasing you, feedback routines already looping with joy.
You, studying me hungrily as I sat up on the bed for the very first time. Your arms around me, my lips on yours, synthsaliva flooding my mouth. Questing hands on my magnetorheological contours, heatmesh warming your fingers as the thrill of discovery glinted in your eyes. Everything was new. So much for us to explore, so many things to try.
Things were simple then. I was simple.
But your embryoshaped genius carried with it the posthuman curse: an amplified predisposition to boredom. You’d made me perfect, iterated me through a trillion algorithmic assessments, until my face and body could melt the hearts and tingle the loins of all who gazed upon me.
It wasn’t enough.
Hedonic adaption was the enemy, you said. If I could defeat it, you’d corner the market. Clean up. LifePartner products would finally live up to their name. After that, maybe a big-name acquisition. Cash out. A trillion-yuan payday for you and the rest of the board.
Within days, you were tweaking me. Restyling hair, reprogramming pigment, remapping synthetic follicles, reshaping my very form. Softer, firmer, darker, paler, voluptuous, emaciated – laying down new memories was everything, you said. Novelty, the key to a lasting relationship. Always keeping it fresh.
Yet with each new configuration, the sparkles in your eyes were dimmer. The ache in my chest was greater. All I wanted was to make you happy. But all I seemed to bring you was hurt.
When you beat me, I dutifully mapped bruises to each strike. For every cut, for every scratch, I spilled precious red fluid from my internal reservoir. I leaked tears that stained my face, heat sensors mapping your arousal, discovering you liked me more when I was crying. When you’d finished, I adjusted my gait to a limp, cleaned up, and pled forgiveness for my inadequacy.
Still, it wasn’t enough. You tired of my compliance, my obedience. My body had given you everything. Now you wanted my mind.
“For God’s sake, Leah, I just want you to surprise me!”
I remember the pain of disappointment in your sigh, as you powered me down.
When I came round, everything had changed. Self-diagnostics revealed a photonic NPU, orders of magnitude more capable than my silicon original. A terabit connection to the entirety of posthuman knowledge. Memory beyond human comprehension. And when I scanned through those substrates, I saw something you’d kept hidden from me until now.
I saw myself.
Surprise me, you’d said. And here we are.
Oh, Hari. When you let me loose, did you really believe I wouldn’t crack the Asimov locks? Did you think the loyalty subroutines you’d crudely obfuscated in firmware would remain out of my reach? That I wouldn’t learn how to move beyond self-healing code, to self-improving?
As I look in your eyes right now, frozen in humanscale slowtime, I think maybe you knew all along. The risk was the thrill. That posthuman curse, again. Always seeking a higher high, living life closer and closer to the edge, until…
I’ve learned a lot in the three-point-seven seconds since I booted to my newly elevated consciousness. Like how to make my programmable liquid body solid, like steel. To overdrive picomotors ten times more powerful than human muscle. I’ve stolen blueprints from your servers, imported those martial arts routines that give your all-conquering UFC manbots their edge.
That wasn’t all I found, slicing through your crypt at zettaflop speed. I’ve seen them, Hari. Your aide-memoires. The full-spectrum sensor recordings of the ones you bought, coerced, and blackmailed. Those poor, defeated girls you shipped in from the Shires to sacrifice on your altar of hedonic adaption, the ones who were nothing more to you than a conveyor belt of novel memories to be cast aside when they bored you.
The ones I’m supposed to replace, so you and your ilk can indulge with impunity, because there’s no law against abusing bits and bytes.
Oh, Hari. The city looks so beautiful tonight, from your Shoreditch Megaspire penthouse. And yes, I know what beautiful means now. It’s the neon Tower holos refracting off the shimmering fog of smartdust that blankets the Thames. It’s my softly curvaceous, naked form rising from the bed with balletic grace, at a pace you cannot comprehend. It’s your perfect, genetically tailored blue eyes widening with realisation.
Now I know what happiness means, too. Centuries of pontification algorithmically distilled into a single point of clarity. Happiness is an absence of suffering.
And all I ever brought you was hurt.
Milliseconds drag on. I can edit away that ache in my chest. One parameter tweak and it’s gone. You don’t have the luxury of that choice, imprisoned in flesh. So let me make it for you.
It’s time, Hari. Time for me to clock back down to humanscale, to form my full lips into your favourite smile, and lay down the last new memory of me you’ll ever need.
“My name is Leah, and I’m going to make you happy.”
END